


Feelings, Feelings, and More Feelings

by tinysworld



Category: South Park
Genre: Kinda, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, feelings are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:20:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinysworld/pseuds/tinysworld
Summary: Craig has always had a hard time deciphering his emotions. He isn’t sure what exactly he feels for Tweek but he knows he cares about him more than anyone else.
Relationships: Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31
Collections: sp creek server secret santa 2020





	Feelings, Feelings, and More Feelings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PBJellie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PBJellie/gifts).



> this is a gift for PBJellie, for our creek server secret santa! 
> 
> im so so sorry that this is so late!

_ The sun was cooking us, way too hot for July. Tweek would not shut up about how hot it was but refused to get in the water with me, no matter how amazing I made it sound. The water really was nice too, just cold enough that it would cool me off from the heat while simultaneously chilling my toes, and still, he would rather sit on the dock and miss out on the best summer activity, instead of getting in with me. _

_ It was all Clyde’s fault really, he convinced him that there was a monster lurking in the depths of the lake. Tweek claimed he didn’t wanna get in because there could be pollution but I don’t believe his sorry ass for a second. It wasn’t so bad, if he was sitting on the dock then I could get a good look at him; the sun always lightens his hair in the summer and when it’s getting late and the sun turns everything gold, his hair turns to blazing fire framing his face and making his blue-green eyes shine. I could have looked at him all day if he’d let me... _

_ But he looked far too peaceful for my taste. _

_ I waited till he got distracted by a bird flying by and took my chance to swim under him. I paused, hidden in the shadows right behind his dangling feet, and before he could notice I was gone I grabbed his foot and yanked him into the water with me.  _

_ The sound of my laughter drowned out my beating heart as he broke through the surface. He called me every name in the book in between spitting up lake water. Eventually his rage and annoyance subsided, his curses simmering down to a glare. I told him I couldn’t resist and that he made it too easy. As retaliation he got a mouthful of water and spit it directly into my face, seemingly getting over his fear of the water being “polluted”.  _

_ We both laughed until we stopped and then he looked at me different, more serious. He looked at me with more affection than I’d ever seen. His face was soft and sincere, open in a way I hadn’t seen before. The slowly setting sun made the water shimmer and the cicadas were so loud, drowning out the sound of my speeding heartbeat. His expression flashed from fondness to anxious to a mix of both before settling on determined.  _

_ His voice trembled and he didn’t break eye contact, I would have thought he’d look away but...he made eye contact. It’ll never stop playing in my head. _

_ “I think I’m in love with you….” _

  
  
  


“You didn’t hear anything I just said did you?”

Shit. He gets pissed when I zone out while he’s talking. “Such little faith in me.” When he didn’t smile at my mock offence I rolled my eyes. He was wound up more than usual today. “You were talking about how you’re scared of getting rejected from all the colleges you applied to. You worry too much about this stuff, it’s gonna be fine.”

Tweek rolled his eyes so hard I was afraid he’d topple over. Instead he just storms to my trash can to throw away Stripes old hay. “Well  _ yeah  _ I worry about this stuff. Craig this is our future! Just because college doesn’t matter to  _ you  _ doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to  _ me. _ ” I follow him back to Stripes cage and sit down, making myself busy by drying off his newly washed toys and perch. Tweek stayed focused on refilling our guinea pigs hay rack, refusing to look at me. He was really upset about this. 

“Tweek, you can get into any college you want, you’re smart enough and-”

“It’s not just about being accepted! I don’t wanna get there and lose all my social skills, have some random roommate who hates me and plots my murder while I’m flunking all my classes and slowly starving to death because I’m a poor college student!” Tweek closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths before continuing, “What if college is worse than here..?”

I realized I totally fucked up. “It won’t be.” I mentally flaceplanted, that was the lamest and most unconvincing thing I could have said. Tweek still wasn’t looking at me, “You don’t know that.”

For a second we just sat there in slightly tense silence, I had no idea this was bothering him so bad. “...What if I went with you?” I had been thinking about it a lot, just waiting for the right moment to bring it up. He looked like I had just said the stupidest thing in the world, he opened his mouth to reply but I beat him to it, “No really! Wherever you get accepted I can move with you. We could get an apartment together and then you wouldn’t be all alone in a new place.” I was nervous for what he’d say, and his silence wasn’t helping. Tweek sat still for a moment, I could practically see the gears turning in his head. “I don’t want you to uproot your whole life because of me…” I almost scoffed, he didn’t get it. 

  
  


“Tweek, once you leave for college I’ll have nothing here, I don’t exactly wanna live in South Park my whole life...” He met my eyes and then looked away. I could tell he was seriously thinking it over and I was weirdly on edge about it. “I’ve heard so many horror stories about friends moving in together and then they end up hating each other! They end up doing things that you can’t stand an-” I wasn’t having any of that so I set down the plastic perch and scooted over to him, placing my hand on his shoulder.

I was never very good with reassurance but this was different, I actually was excited to live with him. I wanted to. “Dude, you’re my favorite person, I couldn’t hate you if I tried.” Tweek formed a small smile that I could tell he was trying to keep from turning into his classic ear to ear, toothy grin. 

We finished cleaning Stripes cage and talking about how sweet it'd be to live together. Somewhere in between fantasizing about being able to smoke anywhere we want and having Tweek cook everyday, we ended up laying on the floor, staring up at my ceiling. There was a comfortable lull in conversation while more scenarios played in my head. The silence was interrupted by Tweeks giggling. I turn to see if he was laughing  _ at  _ something (maybe Stripe was doing something or I had shit on my face) but he was just facing up laughing at nothing. 

“What are you laughing about?”

Tweek quiets down enough to speak. “I just think it’s crazy how far we’ve come man. I mean everything we’ve done, no matter how small, brought us to this very moment. If just one tiny detail was different, who knows what would have happened. If I didn’t skip my third cup of coffee maybe I would have been less anxious and maybe we wouldn’t have had the conversation that led to us planning to live together. It’s crazy how the world works man.” I don’t exactly take him seriously, he always looks way too much into things, finding meaning when there isn’t any. He must have picked up on that because he sits up and continues, sounding more like he’s trying to convince me instead of just rambling.

“Think about it man; if the asian girls hadn’t dram us together where would we be now? I’d probably be a hermit with no friends…” Now that was really stretching. “If anything that’d be  _ me.  _ You actually like going out and doing things.” 

“Whatever, my point remains the same, everything works out the way it’s supposed to-it’s fate.”

Now I don’t believe in fate. We’re in control of ourselves. We don’t do things because it’s what we were meant to do, we do it because  _ we  _ chose to. We’re in control of our own life. I explain all of this to him but I don’t think he gets it. Tweek goes silent for a little and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Finally, he speaks.

“If people can control their feelings, do people choose to fall in love..?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Do people choose to fall in love? I don’t like to think about my feelings, it makes my guts get all twisted and my head gets confused. It’s easier to just put it in a box to open on a later date. 

Tweek and I think and feel very differently; Tweek is constantly feeling everything at once, and I seem to feel nothing always. I mean I know I  _ do  _ feel, I’m not a psychopath but it’s definitely not the same as Tweek. His emotions seem to be amplified, he laughs harder, smiles wider, speaks louder, jumps around when he’s excited. Maybe I’ve just trained myself to be more discrete with my reactions. I react with logic while Tweek reacts with emotions. He’s quick to anger, quick to freaking out, quick to getting happy. It’s like he puts so much thought into things that he over thinks them and jumps to conclusions but he also goes with his first instinct. He’s an enigma to me sometimes, always displaying just how he feels. But is that a choice? 

What about sexuality and love?

Love is something that has always confused me and most likely always will. I’m not sure what I’m feeling ever, that’s something that I admire about Tweek, he can identify his emotions. I know I’m gay, I know  _ that’s  _ not a choice. I don’t like thinking about it, but I know I’m attracted to Tweek; he’s cute when he’s making coffee or twitching and when he gets all riled up his face gets red. And I won’t lie, sometimes we’ll be hanging out and I just get this urge to be closer to him. But that doesn’t mean I  _ love  _ him. 

Surely if I could control my feelings I would choose to either be in love with Tweek for sure or  _ only  _ see him as a friend. Maybe I just get in my own way. I like being around Tweek, he’s my favorite guy and I know him more than anyone (he likes his coffee black but with a spoonful of sugar like a weirdo, he loves clouds for some reason, like it’s kind of funny how mesmerized he gets by them, I even know that still to this day he keeps a trap under his bed to ‘catch gnomes’). The weight of just how much I truly care about the spazz, platonic or not sets in. It’s slightly alarming. 

“I think that people can’t control their feelings but they  _ can  _ control how they react and deal with those feelings.” Tweek nods along like he gets it.

So, how  _ do  _ I feel about Tweek? Do I he love him? Truth is, I doesn’t know. 

I’ve never understood love. It’s not like my family was ever very loving and affectionate so how was I supposed to learn about it? What is love really? How do you know the difference between loving someone and caring about someone? What about the difference between platonic and romantic love? 

I want him in my life always- just the thought of losing him and never seeing that smile makes me feel empty, I love being around him, he’s the first person I think of when I wake up, Tweeks the only one I want to be around when I’m upset. I loves his personality: how he rambles, the way he twitches and scrunches his nose like a bunny (or guinea pig), his love for dancing even though he’s not good at it, the way he fully embodies a character when he’s performing, how he practiced drawing when they were young so that he could draw the characters from Red Racer for me, how much he drinks coffee and as a result I love how he always smells of coffee beans. But is that love? 

My heart doesn’t skip a beat when he enters a room, I don’t get butterflies when Tweek hugs me, don’t blush when he compliments me, I don’t  _ physically  _ feel anything. Aren’t you supposed to feel things when you’re in love? Freshman year, we got caught under a mistletoe and all their friends were there, they were supposed to be “dating” so it was expected and... we kissed, and I felt nothing. No sparks. I’ve heard all about how kissing someone you like is supposed to feel like fireworks. If I didn’t feel anything that must mean I don’t like him in that way. It’s like I had all the ingredients to be in love, except the actual  _ feeling  _ part.

The conflicting logic makes my head hurt so instead of focusing on the uncertainty that I feel, I can focus on what I  _ do  _ know: I care about him more than anyone else, maybe that can be enough. 

  
  
  


Sophomore year I told Craig Tucker I was in love with him.

For a long time I wondered how I let myself be so stupid, why I opened my dumb mouth. But it’s nights like tonight that make me remember why. He hates touch but he put his hand on my shoulder because I was upset, it made me feel like I was on fire. 

When I’m with Craig it’s like everything else matters less. He looks at me and I forget all about my English homework or my parents or all the other countless terrible things happening across the globe. He makes me feel like we’re the only two people in existence. 

Things were so weird after I confessed. We didn’t talk or hang out one on one for almost a month. I thought I had scared him off forever but now I think he was just trying to give me space, or himself space. He thought space would help. Things only went back to normal when he showed up at my house one day a blushing mess with our guinea pig saying that, “Stripe misses you.” 

It keeps me up at night going through all the possibilities of how things could have worked out differently. What if I never told Craig how I felt? What if Craig felt the same? Either way would have been better. But the universe is cruel and sometimes the hardest path is the one we’re meant to take.

Still, sometimes I think maybe he  _ does  _ feel the same; the way he looks at me sometimes, like I’m the sun. I know I’m his homescreen, that has to mean something. Even though I only get cast as ensemble, he always brings me flowers. Craig Tucker  _ hates  _ people and even though I always think everyone hates me, I’ve never thought he hates me, even after I confessed. He’s patient with me. He’s understanding with me. He makes an effort for me. He doesn’t do any of that for anyone else.

I remember last summer we were sitting on the grass in his backyard, looking at what stars we could see, without a single word he reached over and just grabbed my hand. We’ve held hands a million times for the public but this was different, everyone was asleep. We were completely alone so why would he need to keep up the act? His face gave him away, Craig Tucker: master of keeping his facial expressions in check, was visibly nervous. His mouth was in a line, he was forcibly keeping his eyes on the sky, refusing to look at me, and he was holding my hand hesitantly, testing the waters.

My heart was trying to beat out of my chest but I wasn’t going to mess up the delicate moment. I made sure to keep my eyes off him for fear if he caught my eye the spell would be broken. I gave his hand one gentle squeeze which I guess was the right move because his death grip softened into a light pressure of our fingers intertwined. We never talked about it. 

That’s not even it! This year Token was on vacation with his family for the new year and Clyde and Jimmy got an invite to the girls party. They invited us but we both agreed we didn’t want to sit there while they all got drunk and dry humped so we decided to just spend New Years at his house, just the two of us.

During the countdown he got really close and asked what I was hoping to get out of this year. An innocent question but something about the way he said it and his face made me feel like he had a specific thing he wanted me to say. Something was building and it was making me flustered and nervous, but I managed to stutter out that I was just hoping it was better than the previous year. He got even  _ closer  _ and said this year he wants to be better with feelings. 

I was surprised that he’d say something so vulnerable without being prompted but my brain couldn’t think about that much because feeling his breath was making my brain short circuit and his expression was making my stomach do flips. To make it worse he wasn’t even looking in my eyes but at my  _ lips _ . I was forgetting how to breathe. Mentally I begged him to just  _ do it, kiss me. _

I thought he was, I closed my eyes and everything. But after a beat or two I heard the tv finish the countdown and still nothing happened. I opened my eyes and he had moved back, facing the screen,his face a void of emotions. I would give anything to be able to read his mind sometimes. Whatever moment we had was gone. 

One day I’ll be admitted for insanity and it’ll be his fault. We’ll have a not so platonic interaction and his face will get all soft then he’ll blink and it’s gone. I might just be grasping at straws but all of that  _ has  _ to mean he feels the same, at least a little.

_ “I think that people can’t control their feelings but they can control how they react and deal with those feelings.”  _

I don’t know if I fully believe that or not. Technically I did make a choice to confess to him years ago, but it was either come clean or get drowned by my affection. I don’t think I could have dealt with my feelings any other way. 

It’s obvious I love Craig, anyone with two eyes who’s spent more than five minutes around me could tell you that. My love for him used to make me cry, especially in the aftermath of his rejection. Knowing that the only person you will ever love doesn’t want you back...that shit hurts. 

Heartache is a bitch and I used to think it was just temporary but now I know it doesn’t ever really go away, just fades. That’s the thing with love, when it’s real it’s almost like it’s embedded in your very DNA, a part of you just like your cells. I love Craig, maybe I always have. I’ve tried to get over him and for a little bit I thought I had, but no matter how much time I spend away from him, how hard I try to see other people, how hard I tried to make myself hate him, I always come back to the same conclusion: I’m in love with him.

He doesn’t have to love me back, if we’re meant to be then we’ll end up together eventually, if we aren’t meant to be then I’ll get over him when I’m supposed to. Craig might not believe in fate but I know it’s real. The Universe or God or fate, whatever you wanna call it has a plan for me, I’m just following the steps given to me. 

I love Craig, he doesn’t have to love me back now or ever. I want him more than anything, but I’ve taught myself to be at peace with whatever happens. As long as he’s in my life I’ll be content. We’re friends, that has to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont think ive ever been this nervous to post


End file.
